


The Cruelest Month

by livia_1291



Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthdays, Childhood, Disaster, Finland, Gen, How Do I Tag, I will not rest until Emil speaks finnish, M/M, Poor Lalli, Saimaa dreaming, Sweden - Freeform, Tuulikki hotakainen - Freeform, about his childhood, and his parents too - Freeform, but like magic bullshitty immunity tests, ensi hotakainen - Freeform, he was like 8, immunity tests, it's mostly just lalli and his family, jukka hotakainen - Freeform, lalli hotakainen - Freeform, mostly lalli-centric, not suuuuper shippy, sauna birth, there's a little bit of shippy stuff at the end, under 5000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livia_1291/pseuds/livia_1291
Summary: April is the cruelest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.— T.S. Eliot, The Waste LandLalli is born in a thunderstorm.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830850
Comments: 16
Kudos: 54





	The Cruelest Month

Lalli is born in a thunderstorm.

The April night is deep and dark, and Tuulikki languishes in the _löyly_ of Ensi’s sauna, wracked with contractions that are getting closer and closer together. It won’t be long now - she knows it in her bones. The hiss of the water over the stones does nothing to soothe her as she keens, chest heaving with exertion.

“Push,” Ensi tells her, and Tuulikki grits her teeth, her whole body slick and shining in the dim light. Her bangs stick to her forehead, and she grips Ensi’s hand like a vice, bracing herself against the wooden bench. Ensi does not flinch, does not offer encouragement. It is not like her to do so, and besides, she knows that Tuulikki wouldn’t hear her even if she did. Birthing is a completely different world, closer to the spirit realm than the home of the living.

There is a crack of thunder, a final push, and Lalli enters the world, tiny and damp and wild.

When he takes his first shuddering breath and wails his arrival to the sooty sauna walls, Tuulikki cannot help the tears that spill down her cheeks. He is here, despite it all, he is here in the cold, dark world, alive and lightning-bright and _hers_ , and she loves him, she loves him, _she loves him._ She trembles as she lifts him to her breast and lays him there, where he quiets, snuffling into her collar.

Outside the sauna, Jukka paces the soaked spring earth until Ensi retrieves him and allows him to see his wife. She barks orders at Hilja, telling her to bring towels and water and an immunity test, and to _hurry_ , because her daughter-in-law has been laboring all night, and _yes_ , they’re both _fine_ , it’s a boy, and he’s healthy.

Tuulikki needs to rest and bathe, to wash herself of the blood and sweat and tears, and to recover from the sacred exertion of birthing. Lalli is passed off to his father in the interim, wrapped up in a blanket that Anne-Marie has spent many nights knitting in anticipation of his birth.

Jukka cradles his son with wonder and reverence, letting him grip his index finger in a tiny fist. He is so small, so fragile, and at the same time, so fiercely strong. When Lalli opens his wide grey eyes and looks up at him, round little face awash with flashes of blue lightning, he is struck with a sudden, startling understanding. Juha had talked about it once, while they watched Onni marvel over his newborn baby sister.

 _I would face the whole world unarmed if it meant keeping you safe,_ he thinks, and Lalli squirms in his arms, hungry and fussy.

The storm rages outside, turning silver birch trees into lashing whips and splitting the sky into a thousand angry pieces. Tuulikki is resting in their bed now, cleaned up and worn out, but when Jukka enters, she sits up and holds out her arms insistently. He places Lalli on her chest and sits beside her, and she leans into him, weary and still flushed from the sauna.

“Have they done the test yet?” She asks, and Jukka shakes his head, eyes on the little creature nursing at her breast.

“Mom sent Hilja for one, she’ll be back soon.”

The test is a defining and terrifying moment for every new parent in the post-Rash world: will their child have to think about the unthinkable, will they have to buy tiny masks in addition to diapers and bottles, will they have to worry over their baby every day for the rest of their lives?

It’s simple: a quick, deft prick to a chubby thigh produces the tiniest bead of blood. There’s an agonizing three-minute wait while it dries on a little strip of sterile paper, and Jukka has to remind himself to breathe. When Ensi returns, she rests her fingertips on the crown of Lalli’s tiny head and nods once.

“He is immune,” she tells them, and Jukka exhales heavily, shoulders slumping. His brother’s children had had no such luck. Tuulikki, however, only stares at Ensi, wide-eyed and frozen.

“Test again,” she whispers, and Jukka gives her a look, but does not argue. Her fear is a real one. The tests are very effective, but there is always the miniscule chance of a false positive. In their world, that’s not a risk that they can afford to take.

Ensi arches a thin brow, but she, too understands. Lalli does not cry out when she pricks him again. He crinkles his little nose and presses himself closer to his mother, shying away from the tension building around him.

“Immune,” states Ensi once more, holding up the paper so that they can see the dark stain where blood has interacted with dead cells. This time, Tuulikki falls back into the pillows and closes her eyes, overcome with relief. She does not see the way Ensi is studying the child sleeping peacefully on her chest like a little ghost, curious and almost apprehensive.

“Lalli,” she declares, and Tuulikki isn’t sure if the name is a gift or a curse. Outside their window, the wind howls and beats the lake into a vicious frenzy, but for the moment, their little family is safe inside, wrapped up in the magic of new life.

* * *

Two more years pass before Lalli speaks.

“It’s normal,” Juha assures his brother, even though they both know it’s not. Lalli had walked early - at nine months, he was up, toddling away from his cousins, and squirming insistently out of his parent’s arms, but words were simply not coming.

Tuuri had talked at ten months, Onni at eleven months. Lalli is twenty-four months silent. It isn’t that he doesn’t understand - he responds to words, and answers questions with nods or shakes of his head - he simply doesn’t speak.

“He’ll speak when he’s ready,” Ensi tells them, but the tension remains, taut and uncomfortable.

Lalli can feel it. He feels lots of things. He feels the warmth of summer in the wind off the lake before anyone else does. He feels the darkness lurking in the woods on far-away islands, and he feels the wholeness that envelops him when his _luonto_ finally greets him in the world of dreams.

When he finally chooses to speak, it is first to his mother. Tuulikki has two baskets on her arm, woven from birchbark and made water-tight with a layer of sticky birch tar. It is midsummer, and Lalli is on the porch, staring out over the dense green forest. Tuulikki cannot shake the feeling that he is seeing something that she cannot.

“Let’s go pick some blueberries,” she tells him, holding out a gloved hand. He doesn’t take it, instead drawing his little knees into his chest. “They’re ripening fast.”

“I don’t want to,” he says simply. His voice is soft, but the words are unmistakably clear and perfectly articulated. Tuulikki has to bite her tongue to keep from crying with joy.

“Okay,” she says, hoping that her sharp-eared son would not notice the tremors in her voice as she sits down beside him and sets the baskets aside. “Okay, we’ll do something else.”

After that, Lalli decides that words are a far more efficient mode of communication than gestures, and speaks with some regularity. He has always been shy, and he is still quiet, but he states his likes and dislikes, and asks if he needs something instead of grabbing the hem of his father’s tunic and pointing insistently at a jar of lingonberry jam that he can’t reach.

It is no secret that Lalli is a rather peculiar child. He avoids eye-contact with most adults, and skitters out of reach of anyone who tries to touch him, save for his immediate family. He is an extraordinarily picky eater, and prefers his own company to any of the other children’s (though he tolerates Onni and Tuuri.) Despite those little quirks, he is a happy child, clever and fiercely independent.

Jukka and Tuulikki fret over him at night, after he goes to sleep curled catlike in the safe, dark space beneath his bed. They adore their child, the moon of their lives, and they want him to be happy. He _seems_ content, but he is hard to read, and they worry that when he goes to school in the coming years, he will have to face the cruelty of other children who won’t understand him, who won’t even _try_. Lalli is worth it, they think, worth the effort to get to know and understand, but they cannot stand at his shoulder to convince others of that. That is something he will have to face alone.

* * *

Their worries change one late summer afternoon when Ensi knocks on their door. Lalli is five years old, and hides behind her, eyes focused intently on his muddy shoes.

“He is a mage,” Ensi tells them without preamble, and Jukka and Tuulikki share a look. It isn’t exactly a surprise - they had begun to suspect something was up when the nightmares had started.

They had begun in winter, when the darkness encroached on the daytime and the world slept fitfully under its blanket of snow. Every night since then, Lalli wakes in a cold sweat, breathless and frightened out of his skin. His words are not enough to describe what has scared him so badly, and he flinches when Tuulikki reaches out to try to comfort him. Eventually, he stops sleeping during the night. Instead, he holds vigil in the corner of his dark room, still and wide-eyed and wrapped tightly in a blanket as he waits for daybreak. It breaks her heart, and when he cannot see her, she weeps into Jukka’s shoulder.

“I will train him myself,” Ensi promises as they walk her into the kitchen, and Tuulikki picks Lalli up to rest him on her hip so that he won’t track mud, “he is immune, he can go where Onni can’t. Right now, he needs to make his dreams stronger, raise his defenses.”

Now, they don’t have to worry about mean kids at school antagonizing Lalli over his quirks. They only have to worry about their child out in the feral, wild world, facing monsters that neither of them can even begin to comprehend.

“No,” says Tuulikki, and Lalli senses an argument coming and draws in on himself, hiding his face in her straw-blond hair. “I will not have him going out into the lakes, he’s _five_. He can wait until he’s older.”

Ensi gives her a long, sympathetic look. It is out of place on her sharp features.

“We will wait until next winter,” she states decisively. “He starts then.”

Tuulikki knows that they cannot afford to wait any longer than that. She knows this is what they must do, that this is Lalli’s destiny as a mage with immunity to the Rash. It does not make it hurt any less when he pokes her in the hip while she is peeling potatoes later that night, and asks her if training with grandma will make the monsters in his mind go away.

* * *

Ensi collects him for their first scouting run when Lalli is six and a half. It is November, the dead month, and the first snowfall has covered the burning world in fine white powder that shines like diamonds in the late morning sun. That is good for them - the grosslings are hunkering down to try to survive the real cold that will come in January and February.

His mother holds him a little too tightly as they say their goodbyes on the dock, and he squirms in her arms, pulling back to retreat to the side of the boat. Jukka ruffles his hair fondly and tells him to behave, before going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Tuulikki. Their baby will be back in six weeks. Ensi will make sure of it.

That night, they hold each other more tightly than they have in years. Neither of them sleeps.

* * *

Lalli is eight when his world falls apart.

It happens slowly at first. It is spring, and the world is slushy and murky with winter’s death. Everything Lalli owns is covered in mud, and when they finally return to the pebbly shores of his home island after weeks of scouting, he can only think of his own room, and of a warm quilt that isn’t caked with dirt and gods-only-know what else.

They have to wait in quarantine for two weeks, but Lalli doesn’t really mind it. It’s a part of his life, and always has been. He knows nothing different. Besides, there are worse things than sitting around in the safety of a quarantine facility, enjoying real, hot food, and watching the soft spring rain out the window.

When they finally get out, Lalli wants to go home immediately, but his parents have gone to help with the harvest, so he has to wait a little longer. He wiles away the time in a grove of trees by his grandmother’s house, counting the tiny bell-shaped flowers growing in patches where the snow has melted, and watching pairs of meadow birds build their nests in the low branches nearby. The world is awash with tender new life - it is Lalli’s favorite time of year. Soon the long days will be here, and they will sing to Kokko and light a big fire on the lake to pray for good harvest and cleansing. He and Tuuri and Onni will stuff themselves silly with pastries and berries, and then sleep it off in the warm sunbeams that cross the wooden floors in wide golden arcs.

His parents return a few days later - Tuulikki folds him close and coos something completely mushy and embarrassing to him as she kisses his hair and marvels over how tall he’s getting, and Jukka squeezes his shoulders and grins, sneaking him a handful of tart berries when nobody’s looking. Lalli tucks them into his pocket so they can share them later when they sit together in their living room and fill each other in on what has happened during the dark months. Or rather, his parents will talk, and he’ll listen, eat most of the berries, and then fall asleep in his mother’s lap as she brushes his hair.

That never happens, because that is the last time he ever sees them. There is a sick, wicked presence in Saimaa, and it has chosen Lalli’s island to destroy.

Once it begins, it is quick. Ensi covers her contaminated eyes and sends him away, and he runs so fast that he thinks his soul might peel away from his body. Despite that, he is not even winded by the time he reaches Onni and delivers their grandmother’s final message to him.

_Code O._

Later, when he is laying under his bunk in the barracks at Keuruu and listening to Onni’s sniffling and Tuuri’s soft snoring, he realizes that he is nine years old. His birthday has come and passed somewhere between their hasty leaving of Saimaa, their quarantine, and their arrival in Keuruu.

He hadn’t even noticed.

* * *

“When were you born?” Emil asks him in imperfect, lilting Finnish, and Lalli lifts his gaze to the sky, breathing in the warm midsummer air. They are sitting together by the shore of the vast Storsjön, near Emil’s hometown of Östersund. A week’s leave to celebrate the holiday sent them to the north to enjoy a little time to themselves - Lalli likes to get away from the city, and Emil is all too happy to indulge him. Soon, they will leave for Mora, back to the light of cleansing fires and the routine of their day-to-day lives, but now, they have nothing but each other to worry about.

“April. The middle of spring.” It wasn’t an unusual question. Birthdays aren’t really something that he or Emil celebrate or even think about very much. Too many bad memories. They know their own ages, and that is enough.

Emil mulls this fact over for a moment, critically surveying Lalli, who is deliberately refusing to meet his eyes.

“You know, I don’t think I would have guessed that,” he admits, and Lalli rolls his eyes, laying back so that he is sprawled across Emil’s lap. Emil, bless him, does not falter in the slightest, and instead goes right to absently carding his fingers through fine, pale hair. He knows Lalli and his little quirks by now - it was a long and very unconventional process, but worth it for the trust that Lalli shows him in times like this, or when he curls into his chest in the wee hours of the morning and whispers words that he thinks Emil neither hears nor understands. “Do you have a favorite season?”

Lalli closes his eyes and butts his head into Emil’s calloused palm, sleepy and content. The golden evening light flatters his sharp cheekbones and the point of his pert nose, and Emil moves one hand to shade his face from the unsetting sun. When Lalli murmurs in reply, his words are sluggish, but his answer is clear as always. “Winter. Everything’s asleep. It’s safest.”

“Yeah, duh, but do you _like_ it?”

That’s not a question Lalli is expecting. He opens one grey eye and fixes him with a curious gaze, but Emil is staring out over the vast blue lake, brows furrowed as he fills the silence with thoughtless babbling.

“I mean, it is like you to pick a season like winter, but ugh, all that snow? Fall is better, I think, you get all of the cool weather and none of the snow and ice. I guess the trees are nice too, with the pretty colors.”

“...Spring used to be my favorite season,” concedes Lalli, and when Emil looks down at him, his smile is soft and fond. Lalli knows he understands, and so he does not elaborate further, instead tilting his head and reaching out to pick a daisy that was growing near Emil’s thigh.

“That’s more like you,” Emil murmurs, tenderly brushing a loose strand of hair from Lalli’s forehead. “You know, we should do something for your birthday next year. Just the two of us, come up here and enjoy the sun and the flowers...”

Lalli isn’t sure how long it’s been since he’s celebrated his birthday - well over a decade, he thinks. Not since he was a child, and his family would insist on a big dinner and an evening spent together. Those days had been nice, but he had never even entertained the thought of doing anything in Keuruu. Another year had hardly seemed to be something to celebrate.

Now, everything is so very different. He had been ready to spend the rest of his life in Keuruu, scouting and reporting in perpetuity until he died, hopefully of old age and not at the hands or claws of something awful, but he is here now, in Sweden, with the godless love of his life, and a job that he had never once expected to hold. His life is good in a way that he had long believed was not in the cards for him.

 _Fate is strange like that,_ he muses as he finds Emil’s hand and presses the daisy into his palm, _it makes you think you belong one place, and then it puts you somewhere else and tells you to figure_ _it out._

“Yes,” murmurs Lalli, and for the first time in many, many years, he looks forward to the melt of the winter frost. “I would like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> HHHHHH I did not plan on writing this. It came to me while I was on a walk and I wrote it in a two-hour frenzy on my couch at midnight. If you're wondering, I'm handling quarantine VERY well, thanks. Don't call me out on the immunity tests, I have no idea how they would work.
> 
> This is unofficially dedicated to my own wonderful parents, who know I write stuff, but aren't quite sure what. I was much like Lalli as a child, and I know it couldn’t have been easy on them to watch me struggle while being unable to fight my demons for me. You guys will never read this, but thanks for all the early mornings, sleepless nights, undying support in all my endeavors, and horrible talent shows that you so kindly sat through. Thank you for letting me become my own woman. And thank you for letting me go.
> 
> xx.
> 
> Liv
> 
> GLOSS:
> 
> löyly - Finnish. Sauna steam, but the word has more weight than that translation. Every sauna has its own particular löyly, and that directly affects the quality of the sauna.
> 
> Storsjön - Sweden. Lt., the great lake. The fifth-largest lake in Sweden. The town of Östersund is located on its eastern shore.


End file.
